


Ticker Tape and Trickery

by aqua_moon, aretia



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bureaucracy, Heaven & Hell, M/M, Secret Relationship, The Arrangement (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26662834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqua_moon/pseuds/aqua_moon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/aretia/pseuds/aretia
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale are both called into head office for a miracle audit, but maybe they aren't the only ones with something to hide...
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 101
Collections: GO-Events POV Pairs Works





	Ticker Tape and Trickery

**Author's Note:**

> For the GO-events POV Pairs event, for the prompt Lying to Head Office. Featuring aqua_moon writing as Crowley and aretia writing as Aziraphale.

It was just past noon on a Tuesday and Crowley knew better than anyone that the bookshop was most definitely closed. He knocked all the louder though, his toe tapping in sync with his racing heart. 

“Oh for Heaven’s sake,” Aziraphale muttered as he cracked the door open, eyes widening as Crowley pushed past him and into the bookshop with no invitation.

“An audit!” 

“I beg your pardon?” Aziraphale closed the door, straightening his waistcoat and frowning at Crowley’s lack of etiquette and decorum. There were unspoken rules, an established precedent to their meetings, and Crowley was acting off script. 

“Hell. They are doing a miracle audit, _on me_ ,” Crowley all but spat the words. 

“Oh dear. I’ll put on the tea.” 

Crowley snorted but knew better than to comment. They’d done the same dance for eons now, Aziraphale fussing over human food and beverage rituals as a way to keep his hands busy and mitigating his stress while Crowley pointedly didn’t mention it as he paced a well-worn path in the hideous carpet. “I’ve been summoned first thing in the morning, a sit-down with the prince of darkness themselves.”

“Didn’t they do this once before?” Aziraphale asked as he set the black and white matching winged mug set (Crowley had bought them as a laugh but Aziraphale lit up like a damn Christmas tree at the sight of them).

Crowley shook his head, “That was a commendation. The plague.”

“Well… I _did_ warn you about those frivolous miracles, but you are just too impatient for reason.” 

“Seriously, angel?” Crowley shot him a look of pure venom. Leave it to Aziraphale to throw out an ‘I told you so’ in the middle of a crisis. “This isn’t about miraling traffic lights for satan’s sake! No, this is something big. This is _the arrangement_ , big.” 

Aziraphale’s hand stumbled over the sugar pot. “You don’t think…” 

“I don’t think, I _know,”_ Crowley hissed.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale again, somehow encapsulating Crowley’s exact feelings (and a few choice expletives) in the simple words this time. “Well,” Aziraphale cleared his throat. “They can’t know _everything_. What--” The trill of the bookshop phone interrupting his train of thought. Aziraphale and Crowley shared a look of knowing and terror. For once, Crowley didn’t make quippy commentary from the sidelines or pull silly faces to try to distract Aziraphale. He sat stoic, like a snake waiting to strike. 

“Hello? Oh… hello, Gabriel. Is that really necess-- oh? I see. Tomorrow then? Goodbye Gabriel.” 

Aziraphale set the phone down carefully, turned back to his over-steeped tea, pulled out a dusty bottle of whiskey from the cupboard and tipped a healthy pour into each cup. 

“You too then?” Crowley finally asked, unable to take the tension strung taut between them. 

“I’ve been summoned to Heaven for an audit,” Aziraphale answered, “Or as Gabriel calls them, _performance reviews_ ,” he snipped as he passed Crowley a mug. 

“What a wanker,” Crowley snorted. 

“What could it possibly be? Edinburgh?” Aziraphale suggested, settling into his overstuffed armchair and taking a swig of his more-whiskey-than-tea tea. 

“Nah, too long ago,” Crowley answered. “This is recent. The train?” 

“Stopping a train barely counts as a miracle,” Aziraphale huffed. “Honestly.” 

“I prevented an accident and saved hundreds of humans! Not exactly demonic work.” 

Aziraphale waved his hand dismissively, “An accident would have caused delays and traffic, it was hardly a selfless act.”  
Crowley snorted, they both knew that wasn’t it but Aziraphale knew better than to niggle him with ‘nice’ comments at a time like this. 

“Anything can be for demonic reasons, what about me? I sent out Trojans last week!” 

Crowley shook his head, momentarily considering explaining to Aziraphale exactly what a ‘Trojan’ was but thought better of it. The angel was upset enough already, adding fuel to that fire wouldn’t really help matters at hand. “You created a _Trojan horse_.”

“I’m honestly still not sure what that is Crowley, but…” 

“It’s a computer thing. If they ask about it just say you were… preventing humans from accessing pornography and encouraging them to get off their computers and interact with each other. You can spin that, Gabriel won’t know the difference anyway.”

“What about all those American tourists I led to the countryside on vacation? I really just wanted them out of my shop but I think they got lost out there and I’m afraid the town’s people were quite annoyed about the whole thing.” 

“Job creation,” Crowley said dismissively. 

Aziraphale’s spoon clattered against his cup as his hand stumbled, “Crowley, we forgot about the immigration office...” 

Crowley froze, remembering the stack of deportation papers that vanished from existence and the stack of pending refugees who all mysteriously got stamped as ‘approved’ all while Aziraphale was busy sharing terse words with a low-level manager after his favorite restaurant was closed due to immigration issues. 

Crowley dropped his head into his hands, “We are _fucked_.”

~~~

Aziraphale dilly-dallied on his way to the escalator. He knew that Gabriel didn’t have much patience for dillying or dallying, so he tried to hurry through the halls of Heaven to Gabriel’s office. 

“Nice of you to join us, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said when Aziraphale entered the office, leaning across his desk, and Aziraphale shrank under the cold gaze of his purple eyes. Then, the archangel straightened his back and his saccharine smile reappeared. “How have things been on Earth?”

“Quite lovely, now that you mention it.” He would have much rather stayed there than be dragged up to this meeting, but he couldn’t very well say that. 

“Great. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.” He gestured for Aziraphale to sit down in the chair across the desk from him. 

“But first, I wanted to ask you,” Gabriel said, pointing to a strip of paper in front of him, a ticker-tape readout from the miracle counter. “Why did you use a miracle to add marshmallows to cocoa?”

“I was not under the impression that I had to write up a report explaining every miracle, even the most mundane ones,” Aziraphale pressed back icily. “I wouldn’t want to waste your valuable time.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I mean why would you use a miracle on _that?_ ” Gabriel’s face crinkled in disgust.

Aziraphale tapped the tips of his fingers together nervously, the excuse percolating in his mind. “Well, you see, it’s all part of cultivating an angelic image. If a human in need were to walk into my bookshop, I would offer them a beverage as a sign of hospitality, in order to ensure that they leave feeling blessed and more inclined to do good. And the quintessential comforting beverage according to human culture is cocoa. With marshmallows.”

“Save it, Aziraphale. I know you do it for yourself,” Gabriel said, silencing him with a dismissive wave of his hand. Aziraphale lowered his head. “I will never understand your fascination with gross matter, or material objects. But that’s not why I called you to this meeting.”

“It’s not?” Aziraphale said, looking up from his lap. He wouldn’t put it past Gabriel to call a meeting solely to insult his interests and put him down.

“No. The reason I called you here is because I went through the reports and found some missing miracles.” He shuffled the papers around on his desk and pulled out another one. “Last month, you had an assignment to change the heart of a corrupt politician. You marked it as completed, but I didn’t see any miracles in the feed associated with it.”

Aziraphale swallowed as if his mouth had suddenly become full of molasses. “I didn’t need any miracles. All it took to make him see the light was just a stern lecture.” 

Aziraphale hadn’t expected Heaven to follow up on that one. He had complained to Crowley about it over drinks during one of their meetings for the Arrangement, and Crowley had snatched it up with zeal. It didn’t matter that Crowley’s preferred method of making the politician get religion was by tying his shoelaces together, causing him to trip and fall on the anti-homeless spikes outside his office. Crowley could write it off as everyday malice in his report to Hell, and the end result still saved Aziraphale the trouble of having to interact with an unpleasant person. As long as he could check it off the list, he thought, Heaven wouldn’t go investigating any further.

“You weren’t supposed to be able to do this one without miracles, though,” Gabriel murmured, still staring at the page in consternation. “It was a really tough assignment. We gave you a miracle allotment and everything.”

“Humans are easily swayed when you talk to them like you’re one of their own,” Aziraphale asserted. Gabriel didn’t spend enough time on Earth to be able to question him on that. 

Gabriel smiled, a tight, compulsory smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s why we put our best agent on Earth on the job,” he said. If they hadn’t been sitting on opposite sides of a desk, he probably would have given Aziraphale a good-natured punch on the shoulder that left a bruise. 

Gabriel picked up another sheet of paper from the pile. “Moving on. There was a particularly baffling miracle that appeared on the reports from last week. It says that you broke a pipe in an upscale neighborhood and flooded the apartment of an…” Gabriel squinted at the page and stumbled over the unfamiliar word. “What is an ‘influencer’?”

Aziraphale grimaced. That had been his repayment to Crowley for taking care of the politician. An assignment from Hell to inflict some good old-fashioned mischief upon a rich socialite who deserved it. Aziraphale was surprised that Crowley wasn’t more enthused about it, but he’d had an important nap to get to, so Aziraphale had taken it off his hands.

“Ah, yes, well… it was to teach her and her followers about overcoming adversity. Some very inspiring commentary came out of that, you know.”

“I get that, but you put it back to how it was afterwards, right?” Gabriel asked. “Angels haven’t gone around destroying property for centuries. If I wanted someone to do that, I would have sent Sandalphon.”

“Yes, of course I did,” Aziraphale lied. He decided to drop in some righteous defensiveness to further throw Gabriel off. “Honestly, I am offended at the very assumption that I wouldn’t.”

“Of course,” Gabriel said. “But that’s the thing. I have the readout of the flooding, but not of the cleanup. You couldn’t possibly have done that without a miracle, right?”

Aziraphale shook his head. He hadn’t used a miracle for it, because he hadn’t cleaned it up at all. Gabriel looked increasingly flummoxed. “Maybe the miracle readout is broken,” Aziraphale suggested. 

“That’s what I called you here to try to figure out, but it still doesn’t add up,” Gabriel muttered, digging through the pile of papers again. “Hold on. I need to make a phone call.” He held up his finger in the way that only the most obnoxious people do before making a call, pulled the sleek glass rectangle out of his inner jacket pocket, and walked out of the office. He left the door ajar behind him, and Aziraphale leaned over the back of his chair, listening to one half of a bizarre conversation.

“Hello, uh, Your Highness?” Aziraphale wondered who he could possibly be talking to. Heaven didn’t use titles like that. Was it a human dignitary? “It’s me. Listen, is your miracle tracker working?” Now that was even stranger. It couldn’t be a human, but who else would Gabriel refer to that way? 

“No, this is not a prank. I don’t even know what a refrigerator is.”

Gabriel stamped his foot in irritation with the person on the other end of the line, and the sound made Aziraphale involuntarily flinch. “I’m in the middle of a meeting too, but this is important! There are miracles from last week missing from the reports, and… wait, the same thing is happening to you too?”

Aziraphale craned his neck further to hear him, as Gabriel was pacing around outside the door now. “I know, it’s so weird, isn’t it? Look, I haven’t got much time, but maybe we had better meet up in person to discuss this more, don’t you think?”

The noise on the other end sounded like a growl. “Delightful talking to you as always,” Gabriel said dully. “I have to get back to my meeting, but we’ll circle back to this later.” He hung up, and returned to his office. Aziraphale quickly turned back to face the desk, the picture of an innocent angel who most certainly had not been eavesdropping.

“Sorry to cut our meeting short, Aziraphale, but something came up,” Gabriel muttered hastily, shoving papers into a briefcase. “I’m going to try to get this whole thing with the miracle records sorted out. You have an extension on all your assignments until I let you know that the tracker is back up and running.”

“So am I free to go?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Yes, just one more thing,” said Gabriel. His usual cheery, insincere smile seemed much more threatening than usual, and much more harried. “No more frivolous miracles. If I catch you doing that thing with the marshmallows again, I won’t hesitate to come down there.”

Aziraphale nodded, and bustled out of the office. 

~~~

Crowley channeled his thrumming anxiety into his signature swagger, catching his thumbs into the loops of his too-tight pants and putting on an air of cool nonchalance as he stepped onto the escalator heading down to hell. He kept his face neutral as he sank lower and lower; the darkness that settled around him was a physical weight on his corporation and the ever-present stench of sulphur burned his nose. There was a familiarity to it all after so many millennia and all but it wasn’t something he had ever gotten used to. Even the pollution of the city was a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the layers of unpleasant smells that always seemed to ooze from walls. 

Even by demon standards, hell was a vile place. Damp and sticky and crowded, like a sleazy bar or a subway car during rush hour. The only color came from the demotivational posters hung haphazardly, an update since Crowley’s last trip downstairs. 

The entrance hall was crowded with lesser demons, unimportant minions buzzing around on errands and causing a general air of despondency to permeate. Crowley felt their eyes on him, his presence was rare and his deeds legendary so their fear and awe was to be expected. If his trip downstairs had been for different circumstances Crowley might have let himself enjoy his celebrity status a bit more. Today however, his mind was too busy considering all the possibilities to notice or care what some throwaway demon thought of him. 

Crowley had barely stepped off the escalator when a young demon, his hair styled as horns, holding a clipboard fell in step beside him. 

“Good morning demon Crowley, sir. May I say, it is an honor.”

Crowley didn’t know what sort of response was expected so he defaulted to cool and aloof, ignoring the words and continuing on his way. The demon coughed awkwardly, scurrying to keep pace with him. “Prince Beelzebub is expecting you; I am to escort you to their chambers.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, the gesture lost on the demon as Crowley still wore his glasses. He lengthened his stride, the demon all but running to keep pace with him as they proceeded down the long hallway. The crowd of demons thinned the deeper they went into the bowels of hell but the damp stone walls seemed to press in on them all the more. The hallway finally came to an end at an ornate wooden door, the fixtures tarnished and the hinges creaking as it swung open. 

On the outside, Crowley looked as cool as always, refusing to acknowledge his demonic escort as he swaggered through the door without pause however, on the inside his brain was making a dial up noise of anxiety. 

His eyes darted around the room, taking in every detail and formulating a million scenarios and escape plans in a matter of moments. The dripping pipes and steady hum of low-grade evil thrummed through the room, only offset by the buzzing of flies as he came deeper into the room. He zeroed in on Prince Beelzebub seated on their opulent throne situated in the middle of the room. A rickety metal table was set up in front of the throne, and an ancient receipt machine sat atop it with what looked like miles of tape coming out of it, forming a pile on the floor.

“You are late,” they said. 

Crowley opened his mouth, some excuse formulating on the tip of his tongue when Beelzebub held up their hand to stop him.

“Questions have arisen about your miracle usage and the powers of hell have deemed it necessary to punish me with the responsibility of performing an audit,” they waved their hand at the tape on the floor, the machine continuing to click and clack, the tape slowly growing longer. 

“I see,” Crowley answered, trying to keep his rising anxiety from showing. He settled into the chair on the other side of the table, throwing a leg over the armrest for good measure. “I wasn’t aware that hell was unhappy with my performance, after that commendation for the Spanish Inquisition I thought downstairs was more than satisfied.” 

“Dagon has upgraded the filing system and obtained one of these,” Beelzebub all but sneered at the machine in front of her. “And it has revealed some… discrepancies in your reports.” 

“Oh?” 

“For example, can you explain the miracles you performed during what is referred to as ‘the flood’? There are multiple readouts of you performing evasive miracles as well as supplying gross matter for an extended period of time. Dagon has managed to find the memos you sent from that time period and they do not mention the necessity for such things.” 

Crowley’s brain whirled, trying to connect the dots. He’d been all ready to explain the demonic necessity of miracling traffic lights in his favor or the important hellish work of gluing pennies to the sidewalk, he hadn’t considered the possibility that hell wanted to talk about miracles for millennia past. 

He remembered the flood though. It was an event that solidified his relationship with Aziraphale as they’d worked together to save as many children as they could round up, sneaking them onto the ark in the now-empty unicorn stall and caring for them until they were safely on dry land again. Crowley may be a demon but slaughtering the entire world over a few randy angels and their subsequent offspring seemed a bit much, even for upstairs. He’d acted on instinct, something primal inside of him that screamed at the injustice of it all and he found himself herding small humans onto a boat with an angel and spending the next few weeks on the smelly thing keeping the helpless little humans warm and fed and miracling away sea sickness. 

“Well?” Beelzebub pressed. 

Shit. They’d caught him off guard and he could feel how off kilter he was. Crowley scrambled to pull himself together. “Ah well… you see. I had it on good authority that the opposition had plans for the event, the ark and the rainbow and all that nonsense, and only the chosen family was supposed to make it out, so I thought I’d stir up some mischief--” Crowley’s fumbling was cut off by a poorly timed demon scurrying into the room carrying an ancient rotary phone on a serving platter, the cord dragging along behind them. 

Beelzebub’s eyes flashed and Crowley could tell they were moments away from disintegrating a demon for fun, the ever-present flies buzzed in agitation around their head. 

“Your disgrace, the noise machine is summoning you!” 

“Idiot,” Beelzebub muttered, snatching the phone and the demon scurried out of the room. They let out a long suffering sigh before picking up the receiver and hissing “What?” with as much venom as Crowley had ever heard them use, which was impressive to say the least. After a pause, their annoyance seemed to only amplify. 

“I don’t have time for prank calls. Is this your version of ‘is your refrigerator running’?” 

Crowley felt supremely uncomfortable, alone in a room with the prince of hell while they took a personal call. Did Beelzebub have friends? Who would call them? He had so many questions he really didn’t want the answers to. He considered sneaking out of the room but the thought shriveled up and died as Beelzebub pinned him with a glare. 

“I’m in a meeting, your timing couldn’t be worse.”

Crowley studied the grease drip patterns on the wall.

“Miracles from last week? I’m still working through the missing miracles from Mesopotamia!” 

Perhaps it was Dagon? Who else would be asking about miracles? 

“Yes, you twit! I’ve got a stack of confusing and questionable miracles sitting in front of me; the machine must not be calibrated right.”

Definitely Dagon. 

“I think you should go sit on a pineapple you pompous--”

Whoever it was on the phone, Crowley was just really glad it wasn’t him.

“Yeah, whatever,” Beelzebub slammed the receiver down with a huff, looking frazzled and dangerous. “It has been brought to my attention that the miracle counter may not be working.”  
“Oh?” Crowley said carefully, the tension rolling off of Beelzebub was like a minefield and Crowley was trying very hard not to take a misstep. 

“I can’t believe we let Dagon waste demonic funds on something that doesn’t even work! Do you know how much paperwork this is going to involve?” 

“Shall I…?” Crowley motioned towards the door. 

“This conversation isn’t over,” they said, eyes narrowing. “But I have more pressing matters to attend to so… yes; leave.” 

“A pleasure, as always your princeliness,” Crowley made an exaggerated bow before sauntering out of the room. He wasn’t sure how he got quite so lucky but he wasn’t about to question it. 

“Well that was a thing.” Crowley whispered to himself as he stepped on the escalator back up to earth, his mind reeling from the strange encounter. Then he remembered… the flood, the countless little miracles he and Aziraphale did during that time. More importantly, when that silly angel finally saw what a rainbow was, he was less than impressed. He exact words if Crowley remembered correctly (and he did) were “those are some lovely colors in the sky but hardly worth killing everyone over.” So that delightfully petty bastard of an angel, killed dove after dove, making Noah and his family stay on the ark far longer than heaven had planned for, all the while buying them time to get the secretly saved humans settled and secure. Coincidentally, the children developed quite a taste for roasted dove. It is still considered a delicacy in certain parts of what is now called Turkey. 

While Crowley could explain away his side of things, an angel would be in some seriously hot water for killing anything, but definitely the designated messenger from the Lord herself! What if heaven was asking Aziraphale the same questions? They hadn’t planned for that and Crowley knew Aziraphale wasn’t great under pressure, not with Heaven. Usually Crowley considered himself too cool to run but that day he made an exception, he needed to get to the bookshop, to get to Aziraphale.

~~~

Aziraphale breathed in the familiar smell of dust and old paper, relieved to be back in his bookshop after the stifling atmosphere of Heaven. He was about to settle in for a relaxing cup of tea when he heard a pounding on the door.

There was no question about who it could be, even before he heard the frantic voice coming through the glass. “Angel! Angel! Are you all right?”

Aziraphale rushed to open the door and let Crowley inside. “Yes, dear boy, I’m perfectly fine. What on earth has gotten you so riled up?”

“It’s just… that meeting in Hell was weird, and it got me worried that something had happened to you.” Crowley lowered his head, looking flushed from the admission. 

Aziraphale ignored the gymnastic flip that his stomach did in response to Crowley’s concern for him. “I assure you, I am quite all right. I had a strange meeting as well. Would you like to come inside so that we can discuss it?”

Crowley promptly sprawled over the couch in a position that could in no way be considered an approximation of sitting, while Aziraphale busied himself with making tea. He returned to the back room with two cups, and took a seat, properly, in his chair. 

“So, what was so concerning about your meeting?” Aziraphale asked.

“You wouldn’t believe it. Beelzebub wanted to know about miracles going all the way back to the Flood! They were trying to trick me into some admission of doing something good that I didn’t even remember, I’m sure of it,” Crowley babbled, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could form them into coherent syllables. “Did Gabriel try the same tactic on you?”

“Not at all,” Aziraphale said. “Heaven is much more up to date about these sorts of things. All the miracles he wanted an explanation for were recent.” He looked up at Crowley over the rim of his teacup. “Like flooding an apartment.”

Crowley dragged a hand over his face. “You agreed to that, remember? You’ve got to hold up your end of the bargain.”

Aziraphale waved his hand. “I know, I was returning a favor,” he said. “Gabriel was stumped by that one, so I let him think that the miracle counter was broken. He gave me his usual lecture about frivolous miracles, and said he’s going to personally intervene if he catches any, but that was about it. Oh, and he left to make a phone call to someone he referred to as ‘Your Highness.’”

“No way! Beelzebub got a phone call in the middle of my meeting, too!” Crowley cawed.

“That is an odd coincidence,” Aziraphale mused. “You don’t think they were talking to each other, do you?”

“I hope not. The combination of those two is the last thing the world needs.” Crowley sank back into the couch, making a further attempt to meld his body into the cushions. “I need something stronger,” Crowley muttered into his teacup.

Aziraphale raised his hand into the air without a second thought. 

“Wait, angel, you can’t just--” Crowley sputtered, leaning out of his seat.

Aziraphale didn’t register Crowley’s protest until he had already snapped his fingers, and a dollop of whiskey materialized in midair and splashed into Crowley’s cup. He looked up at Crowley innocently, noticing his distraught expression. “Whyever not?”

“You just said that Gabriel was getting on your case about _frivolous miracles,_ ” Crowley hissed.

“Oh dear, I suppose I forgot. It just comes so naturally to me, doing miracles for…” _For you,_ Aziraphale meant but didn’t say. He wanted Crowley to be comfortable in his bookshop, in his presence, and would bend reality to make that happen if needed. “For hospitality reasons, of course,” he stuttered out. Crowley always went out of his way to do things for him even if he was perfectly capable of doing them himself. If anything, he had picked up the habit from Crowley, who was hardly in a position to criticize him for it. 

Crowley seemed to get his meaning anyway, and made a choked sound. “Ngk. Yeah. I appreciate it, but now Gabriel is going to come knocking on our door at any moment.” Both of them turned towards the door and waited for several tense minutes, before Aziraphale cleared his throat. 

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s coming,” Aziraphale said. 

“Not like that wanker Gabriel to be late,” Crowley agreed.

“Yes, I rather think that if he was coming at all, there would be a lightning storm outside by now.”

“That’s weird,” Crowley said. “Why would he threaten you with something like that if he wasn’t actually planning to make good on it? I thought your lot didn’t break promises.”

“According to him, certainly not,” said Aziraphale. “Maybe he just didn’t notice? I mean, it was only a small conjuration.”

“That is the definition of a frivolous miracle. Which is the exact thing he told you he was watching out for.”

Aziraphale hummed thoughtfully. Then, he decided to do an experiment, and snapped his fingers again, adding whiskey to his own cup. 

“Aziraphale! What do you think you’re doing?!” Crowley blurted. “If one miracle isn’t going to bring them down on us, now you’ve really done it.”

“It doesn’t look like I have, though,” Aziraphale said, pointing to the street outside, still bustling with Soho traffic but still empty of a certain archangel. 

“They said the miracle reports weren’t working, right? So maybe that’s why he didn’t notice,” Crowley suggested. Then, a lascivious grin split across his face. “Or maybe they’re just distracted. You said Gabriel made a call during your meeting, right? Maybe he was inviting Beelzebub over because he really wants to get a pineapple shoved up his--”

“ _Crowley,_ ” Aziraphale admonished, shooting him a glare. Then, his voice dropped into a whisper, as if anyone could be listening. “Do you really think that our bosses could be involved in some sort of… clandestine relationship?”

“It’d make things a whole lot easier for us if they were,” Crowley remarked. “They’d have less time to breathe down our necks about miracles, for one thing.”

“I suppose you have a point, but I hardly think that Gabriel is the type of angel who makes a habit of associating with demons,” Aziraphale commented.

“And I don’t think Beelzebub could put up with that blowhard for longer than an ice cube’s life in hell, but stranger things have happened,” Crowley said. Behind the sunglasses, he cast what felt like a weighted glance at Aziraphale.

“I think we both have more important things to worry about than office gossip,” Aziraphale sighed. “Such as the impending apocalypse.”

“Don’t remind me of that,” Crowley groaned. “Let’s just enjoy this reprieve while we have it.” So they settled into the cushions with their cooling tea and miracled alcohol, and talked about frivolous things that were definitely more important than office gossip. They were onto something, more than either of them would like to admit.


End file.
